Define Social Psychology
The scientific study of the way in which peoples thoughts, feelings, and actions are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people
Define Naive Realism
The human tendency to believe that we see the world around us objectively and that people who disagree with us must be uninformed, irrational, or biased
Define Underestimating the Power of the Situation
Oversimplification of complex situations
Define Self-Esteem
An evaluation of ones self-worth
What is Self-Justification?
We may modify our attitudes about painful situations we have chosen to endure, in order to justify our participation to ourselves
Ideas and assumptions about social thinking and behavior are tested by what?
The objective and systematic collection of data using the scientific method
Use 3 words to describe Common Sense conclusions
unreliable, oversimplified, and contradictory
Both Social & Personality Psychology share an emphasis on what?
individuals and the reasons for their behavior
Behaviorists seek to understand what?
They seek the power of the situation by considering the effect of reinforcing properties of the environment on human behavior
Define Social Cognition
How people select, interpret, remember and use social information; How people think about themselves and their social world
Define Objective Properties of the Social Environment
How people perceive, comprehend, and interpret their social world
Define Social Psychologists
How and Why our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are shaped by our environment
Personality Psychologists focus on what?
individual differences, or the aspects of peoples personalities that make them different from others
Define Gestalt Psychology
Seeks to understand how the human brain perceives experiences.
What is The Social Cognition Approach?
The incorporation of human cognitive abilities into theories of social behavior
Fill in the blank
Social Psychology is an __A__science
experiment-based
Social Psychology seeks to identify what?
Universal properties of human nature that make everyone susceptible to social influence
Define Fundamental Attribution Error
The tendency to overestimate the extent to which a persons behavior is due to internal, dispositional factors, and to underestimate the role of external, situational factors
What did Kurt Lewin do?
Applied Gestalt principles to social perception
What do Social Psychology & Sociology differ on?
They differ on their level of analysis
Define Construals & fill in the blank:
The __A__ interpretation of social phenomena as construals
The way a person understands the world or a particular situation
A. Subjective
What is similar about Social Psychologists and Philosophers?
Social Psychologists and Philosophers address similar questions about human nature
What do both Social Psychology & Sociology share?
They share an interest in situational &societal influences on behavior
Namen two Important Motives
1. The need to feel good about ourselves (Self-Esteem)
2. The need to be accurate about ourselves and our social world (Self-Justification)
What makes social psychologists different from Philosophers?
social psychologists use controlled experiments to address questions about human nature